Soviet Agent Linked to Bloch Is Reported to Be an Employee of the U.N. in Paris

By STEPHEN ENGELBERG, Special to The New York Times

Published: August 3, 1989

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2—
The investigation that led to suspicions of espionage by Felix S. Bloch, a State Department official, began this year when American intelligence agents, acting on a tip, started to follow a man in Austria who was posing as a Finnish businessman, Government officials say.

As Central Intelligence Agency officers from the Vienna station listened to the man's phone calls and tracked his movements, they soon discovered that his Finnish passport was forged, his business contacts invented and his name not to be found in standard computerized data bases. A Frequent Traveler

The C.I.A. officers then learned something even more startling: the man, identified on his passport as Reino Gikman, was actually a Soviet agent who worked in Paris for the United Nations. His carefully concocted false identity as a Finn, the officials said, was a cover for frequent travels around Europe as a spy.

Officials identified the agent today by the name he sometimes used, Pierre. ABC News said tonight that he held a passport in the name of Mr. Gikman, and officials confirmed the report. Both names are assumed to be false. The officials said it was Mr. Gikman whom French investigators photographed in May receiving a briefcase from Mr. Bloch, the State Department diplomat under suspicion of spying for the Soviet Union. The same man later met with Mr. Bloch in Brussels, the officials said.

Mr. Bloch, who was the No. 2 official in the United States Embassy in Vienna from 1983 to 1987, has not been charged in the case and he remains the focus of an intensive investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A Government official said that in his only interview with the F.B.I., Mr. Bloch said he knew Mr. Gikman as a fellow stamp collector.

It has been reported that Mr. Bloch was videotaped by French intelligence agents in May passing a briefcase to a suspected Soviet agent. In addition, Austrian officials announced last week that they had confirmed the American suspicions about the false identity used by the supposed Finn. But it has not been previously reported that these two figures in the case were the same person.

The officials said the elaborate procedures apparently used by Soviet intelligence to deal with Mr. Bloch indicated that he was providing information of value. They said the precautions taken by Mr. Gikman suggested a new level of sophistication in Soviet techniques for the use of agents. Suspended by State Department

The disclosures by American officials about Mr. Gikman's activities also provide a fuller picture of how the State Department came to suspend Mr. Bloch on June 22 from his post as a senior official in the department's European bureau.

Under American law, criminal investigations in espionage cases are handled by the F.B.I. The detection of espionage by Americans overseas is largely the responsibility of the C.I.A. and, when diplomats are involved, the State Department's security officers.

In the early 1980's, the C.I.A. was criticized by some in the Reagan Administration and some legislators for failing to take its counterintelligence role overseas seriously. A particular focus of the criticism by some officials was the C.I.A.'s Vienna station, which was said to be doing little to counter the active contingent of Soviet intelligence officers stationed in the city.

Nearly every major spy convicted in the 1980's in the United States, from a former Navy warrant officer, John A. Walker, to a National Security Agency analyst, Ronald W. Pelton, was met in Vienna by Soviet intelligence operatives for at least one face-to-face meeting, according to trial testimony and court documents.

Under William H. Webster, the Director of Central Intelligence since 1987, the C.I.A. has substantially strengthened its emphasis on overseas counterintelligence, Government officials say. Closer Cooperation

Several officials familiar with the case said the investigation of Mr. Bloch was an example of what has been increasingly close cooperation between the C.I.A. and F.B.I. The two agencies were often at odds over sharing of information and procedures in the 1970's and early 1980's, as well as during the tenure of J. Edgar Hoover as F.B.I. Director.

Government officials said Mr. Gikman, the Soviet spy in Paris, was operating in Austria as what is called in intelligence jargon an illegal. He was not in the country as a diplomat and was thus subject to arrest and imprisonment if caught. Diplomats have immunity and can only be expelled if they are caught spying.

Government officials said suspicions about Mr. Gikman arose this year. They declined to provide specifics about the tip-off, but said it prompted a major effort to observe him during his next trip to Vienna. Mr. Bloch served in Vienna from 1980 to 1987 and it was not known whether Mr. Gikman was in the city to meet with a separate spy from a Western country.

American officials said they have not ruled out the possiblity that the Soviet agent was running more than one agent.

At a news conference last Friday, Austrian officials announced that they had been investigating the Finnish businessman at the behest of the Americans. They said they had confirmed that his Finnish passport was forged and that his stated occupation - as representative of a computer concern with ties to I.B.M. - was untrue.

The Vienna officials said that the man began going to Austria in 1979 and that each of his visits lasted weeks or months. The officials said they had not independently confirmed the man's identity as a Soviet intelligence agent.

American officials have said they believe that Mr. Bloch began spying for the Soviet Union about 15 years ago, when he was stationed in Berlin.

It is not known precisely when the C.I.A. began its observation and electronic surveillance of Mr. Gikman. But by mid-May, when he called Mr. Bloch to arrange a meeting in Paris, American officials were listening as he dialed a trans-Atlantic call from a location officials declined to disclose.

When the call went through, officials said, American investigators did not have any suspicions of Mr. Bloch. They quickly arranged with French intelligence for surveillance of the meeting, which took place in Paris within days.